


please pray for me when i am away

by OAbsalom



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley Has Feelings (Good Omens), Crowley Has Sex With Humans But They Aren't OCs Or Even Cs At All, Implied Death, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Non-Explicit Sex, Personal Growth, Pining, Psychology, The Ephemerality of Mankind, There's A Hell Of A Lot More Aziraphale In This Fic Than It Sounds Like There Is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-22 11:36:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22562782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OAbsalom/pseuds/OAbsalom
Summary: It always stung, watching Aziraphale leave. He got lonesome, and there were plenty of people to be with. It was a sin after all, what he would do with them. His job to lead them astray. Without Aziraphale around, it was so easy to slip into someone's life. Slip into someone. Anyone.There were so many. It didn't matter who they were. Mere minutes in the long days between seeing Aziraphale. Mere punctuation marks in Crowley's story.          Mere stepping stones to understanding who he was - and what love with Aziraphale could be.(Trust the tags - there's a lot more Crowley-Aziraphale pining in here than it sounds like there is. I also don't like to read OC stuff; this is all just Crowley with background noise.)
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 28
Kudos: 81
Collections: Good Omens (Complete works)





	please pray for me when i am away

It always stung, watching Aziraphale leave. Going on with their lives like it was nothing.

It was something to Crowley. It was everything to Crowley. The first few years each time were the hardest, but it got easier the longer they were apart. The leather of the thing got softer and more pliant. Not the tough, unyielding patch he'd always leave him with.

He got lonesome, though. And there were plenty of people to be with. Crowley quite liked people. They were fun to watch, like keeping an eye on curious children running about the back garden. They were an enigma, their soaring highs contrasting sharply with their terrifying depths. It was a sin after all, what he would do with them. His job to lead them astray. Without Aziraphale around, it was so easy to slip into someone's life. Slip into someone. Anyone.

It made him sad sometimes. They fell like so many mayflies from the air around him. Mayflies he'd gotten to know and grown fond of. Mayflies he'd _used,_ but they would never know that. Mayflies he'd drawn down to Hell. 

There were so many. It didn't matter who they were. Mere minutes in the long days between seeing Aziraphale. Mere punctuation marks in his story.

\----

She'd held his hand there, walking past the tall reeds, blush rising up her neck. Her hand was slender and bony like his own, and he thought of the broad, satin fingers he could be holding instead. He smiled at her - a smile that filled his face, wide and bright, shining like a light from ear to ear. It worked on them, women and men, every time. So disarming and welcoming. He wondered sometimes if he should ever show it to Aziraphale. Would it work on him, too?

His eyes twinkled in the reflection of this shine. She'd asked about them, then. The question was never avoided for long.

"Birth defect." Always satisfied them. Or at least embarrassed them enough that they didn't bring it up anymore.

Fingertips ghosted his bicep, and she watched him in breathless awe. Aziraphale in the Garden, looking up at him, still full of wonder and innocence and questions he wouldn't ask. Questions that had set flame to Crawly's divinity and plunged him into darkness. He had her, then; she wouldn't be saved. Theirs was a quiet sin, just the two of them together. He fucked her gently, surrounded by clay walls, rolling hips slipping him in and out of her. She had pale green eyes that he watched like waiting for a ship on the horizon. Faint feelings of affection sighed from them both, the sweat that cooled their bodies being traced off by timid shadows of touches. Would that he could dive into Aziraphale's green eyes, skim his fingers across the cream of his skin like this, make him sigh with affection, too.

How she lusted after Crawly; not just the lazy waves of pleasure he sent through her, but the feeling of hushed belonging. He murmured often that he loved her. It wasn't true, though sometimes he thought it could be. It helped her buy in, at least. The words were familiar to him and came easily to his lips; he'd whispered them in dreams to a man with white wings. In the darkness of nights as she slept, he'd fit himself to her body like a glove. Oils from her hair smelled of salt and earth and everything human. Nose nestled against her crown, sometimes he'd wonder if the angel's smelled of cassia and myrrh; sometimes, it was just her.  
  
He hadn’t known before then what it was like to want them to stay, his hushed whispers of dedication truths in the night.

She didn't stay quite long enough. She'd left him in the night while he slept. He had fallen asleep holding her, fiery and red as Hell. He had awoken holding her, cold and grey as Heaven.

He wouldn't do quiet sins again for a very long time after that.

\---

He had a new name now. Different than when he'd had her and so many others.

The man had eyed Crowley from across the table, the latter taking a long swig of his mead. He was young, but plenty old enough to know the trouble he was walking into. Downy blond hair twirled round his ears, eyes dancing in the candlelight. This one looked too much like Aziraphale, a mistake Crowley had made so many times before. A mistake he was willing to make again. Always a mistake he was willing to make.

He swallowed down his drink, smacked his lips, breathed in deep through his mouth. Damp places, indeed.

The rules had changed a couple hundred years back. This was still just as much of a sin as it had always been, just for different reasons than they crucified men now. Those terrifying depths of humanity again. They were not the depths the young man was considering, though, as he lifted the metal fabric of looped rings from Crowley's shoulders. He dropped the weight to the ground with an unforgiving clatter. Their sin was loud. The room that now surrounded them was made of stone, their shouts echoing within but silenced to anyone without. Crowley rode him for hours, peeking past heavy lids in seeming pleasure, just enough that the gentle blonde waves transformed into tight, decadent curls. Until the lechery looking up at him was encouragement and adoration. An everspring of divine love. 

The man wasn't always gentle with Crowley; this was fine with him. The demon wouldn't break the way he wanted Aziraphale to break him. He stretched him, filled him up again and again. Sometimes, face pressed hard into the bed below them - it smelled of fresh hay - Crowley would moan the angel's name just ruined enough to be unintelligible. Fingers twined in blazing curls to hold him down. Broad, satin fingers.

They drank loudly together at pubs, smacked wenches on their asses, caused havoc and roared rollicking laughter together. The man was rude and rowdy and in no way like Aziraphale. Yet, sometimes, when he looked at Crowley with a kind smile, the Tempter could pretend it was the angel enjoying who he truly was, unlike his typical chiding. 

Pretending didn't wring him out for the young man, though - and not as young anymore. Crowley had almost begun to settle into the idea - running his fingers, prickly, over his stubble in the mornings to wake him - when the call for some Crusade or another came through, the squire-cum-knight moved by God - _moved by something at least_ \- to join in the fight. The much-later call from Head Office came with memories of watching the man march away, a red cross on his chest. He’d done it for God - a stupid angel blinded by misplaced faith. Crowley accepted his commendation having never known where the church had gotten the idea.  
  
Crowley wouldn't remember this one's face or name or voice.

Always a mistake he was willing to make.  
  
\---  
  
He would wait for him on the terrace of his bedroom. Crowley would have preferred he waited inside so he could take a miraculous shortcut rather than actually have to _climb_ the lattice, but it was worth it to see the man's chest swell over the romantic gesture. This one wasn't at all reminiscent of his always-companion, and it made it better. And worse. They kissed in the moonlight, Crowley's tongue traveling much too far into his mouth, the man's hands tracing down his neck.

Romance was a fairly new concept the humans had invented, and it thrilled through Crowley's chest. He was good at sex - _amazing_ at sex - but the prescribed motions of romance were paradoxically freeing. There was no doubt what one's intentions were with romance. Flowers -- if he took the angel flowers, would he know? Gestures -- if he offered his hand to help him over the deep curb, lifting him up, protecting him from the scum below, would he swoon against his breast?

The man would often tug at Crowley's doublet, a bright grin snaking across the latter's face. He allowed himself to be pulled into the sitting room, reclining between muffled wooden walls for hours with wine and soft voices. They would brush one another's hair back, blush, kiss softly. A sparse few nights, Crowley imagined a day when his frequent winenights with Aziraphale would lead to soft voices and caresses. Most nights, though, he just saw the ravenhaired man in front of him. He visited him nightly for months before he finally slithered between his sheets. Over the millennia, he'd had sex. Fucked. Fornicated. Known. With this man, though, he ran his hands up his lithe chest, looking into his eyes as he made love to him. Tasting his lips softly and slowly until their tenderness overcame them, coming together with soft coos of devotion. Their sin had no sound at all, nothing as it was.

It was the first time since... Well, it was the first time since he was a Different Name that he didn't want to let go of a thing he'd found.   
  
For years, they tiptoed around the violent impulses of society toward their behavior, seeing one another frequently for plays and meals and strolls. Rarely, Aziraphale would float into his mind. These seemed like things he'd like to do. The longer the years got, the rarer the bobbing thought. 

Decades marched, and finally he started to notice. Crowley's hair wasn't graying, his skin not losing its tautness, his step-spring not slowing a mark. His stares from across the table slowly turned from adoration to concern, and they just grew longer and longer. When finally the silence broke - the accusation stinging from his lips like acid - the demon heard the shrill tones of repentance and horror in his voice.

What devil had been sent to lead him from God, he'd asked. To hold his soul captive all these years?

_Not this one, not this time._

Crowley forgot himself - no self-control to winch in his nature - and fervently insisted it didn't matter. He assured him he cared deeply for him and always would. He would always be there for him, until the end.

The words weren’t easy to give him – He was a demon. He didn’t tell the truth often.

But, leaning forward and reaching for his lover's face only caused him to bolt from the table, chair clattering to the ground. The enamel of the demon Crowley's heart crazed and chipped, shedding pieces toward his lungs. The remainder of the 14th century was sworn off altogether.

  
He would remember his face and name and voice for hundreds of years.

\---

The further time crawled on, the more often he saw Aziraphale. That made it easier, to be so near him. And so much more painful, to be never quite close enough. There was so little time and space between the two occult entities now that it was a feat not to tip his hand to Aziraphale. So, she was there, in the background. At his flat or hers, up against the plaster walls. It was almost like a double life – he often felt like a spy.

Theirs was a secret sin. He didn’t turn it in to Hell. He didn’t want it on the record. Didn’t want “someone” sent to recover her soul. It had happened more than once, Aziraphale showing up as he caressed a lover’s face. It left Crowley burning them quickly – or, making sure Hell would – as if they were only a job. This, though. This was for him, not any of them, and especially not Aziraphale. He took her to places he didn’t expect the angel would think to find him. Places he could relax into fresh conversations, instead of musty ones. Laughs that rolled and ribboned over his body like thick, warm caramel instead of cracking and plunging him into frigid depths like thin, anxious ice. Eager, lingering touches instead of timid, flighty grazes.

Almost a shame she wasn’t actually a job, though. The ones with the worst self-worth were the easiest bags, and hers was in the red, her words a harsh greenskeeper to her own spot-covered existence. It felt good to soothe her anxiety and try to build her up. He’d build Aziraphale up, too. Pet his hair, tell him he was better than all this. Would the angel also gaze at Crowley like he was thankful the demon ever even looked his way? Like he was worth more for Crowley’s love? _Such a selfish thought_ , he’d reflect as he basked in her glow.

One loud night, she’d asked above the music, over a high-top scattered with empty pint glasses, across the ages and impossibilities between them, if he thought he’d ever get hitched. If he’d ever been asked. His eyelids slid down to slowly, deliberately blinker his golden “contacts” (thank Satan they’d invented those, explaining his _birth defect_ had gotten much easier). A sly, _nearly_ bashful grin crawled a cheek into a peak.

_Only by every third human I do this with._

No, he’d responded, loudly enough for the music.

Forever is a very long time, he’d said, probably heard.

Much too long to belong to only one person, he’d murmured, only for him.

Stumbling drunk through the streets, she’d begun to cry. Didn’t Crowley want her? Wasn’t she good enough for him? Who could she be – she’d become anyone he wanted her to be if it meant he’d have her forever. He held her tight in the center of the pavement, the occasional passerby dipping off into the roadway to get by them, letting her sob loud and soggy into his chest. He told her he wanted her forever. She was good enough. She didn’t need to be anything different than she already was.

The words were easy to give her – He was a demon. He lied all the time.

Pressing her head to his bathroom wall later, he thought of marriage and fucked into her every wish for normalcy he had. Fucked deep the thought of keeping anyone, having any of them for as long as he deserved, as long as _they_ deserved. Fucked away from him the dead certainty of doing this endlessly, human upon human, until God Herself decided to turn the sun sackcloth-black and drop all of Crowley’s carefully-placed stars to the earth, heavy like overripe figs.

After she left the next morning, she forgot to ever call him again, and she’d never know why.

\---

“It burned down, remember?”

Aziraphale’s face deadened in disbelief before him.

Crowley could offer it to him like he’d offered it to so many before. This could finally be the performance. Didn’t he know the motions now? Hadn’t he rehearsed thoroughly enough?

All of the mayflies fell behind his eyes. The fevers and self-destruction. The spending and losing.

The loneliness.

“You can stay at my place, if you’d like.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hold my hand, I am afraid. **Please pray for me, when I am away.**  
>  Comfort the girl, help her understand: No memory, no matter how sad,  
> And no violence, no matter how bad, can darken the heart or tear it apart.
> 
> Take my hand when you are scared, and I will pray, if you go back out there.  
> Comfort the man, help him understand that no floating sheet, no matter how haunting,  
> And no secret, no matter how nasty, can poison your voice or keep you from joy.
> 
> [ _Normal Song_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB65TUgFFzM), by Perfume Genius
> 
> Thank you to [Eturni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eturni) and [JoseyxNeko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/joseyxneko) for keeping my Britishisms on track. <3


End file.
